The Worm Moon
March's full moon
Thaw, first movement, emergence
The March full moon, and the clearest case of the whole list's murkiness. The familiar story says earthworms surfacing in thawing soil. But the name traces to Jonathan Carver, who travelled the Great Lakes in the 1760s and wrote that the worms in question were beetle larvae emerging from thawing bark. Its companion name, Lenten Moon, is straightforwardly Christian and European.
Where the name actually comes from
The honest attribution
Traced to Jonathan Carver's 1778 Travels, where he recorded a beetle-larvae meaning — not the earthworms of the popular retelling.
Also called: Lenten Moon, Crow Moon, Sap Moon, Crust Moon.
How it tends to be kept
- Traditionally marked as the point where the ground first softens
- Many people mark it as the last full moon before the spring equinox
- Sap Moon points at the maple sap running — a genuinely seasonal, regional name
Questions the month asks
- What is starting to move again?
- What have I been waiting all winter to do?
- What is surfacing that I'd rather not look at?
Prompts are invitations to notice, not assignments — tradition offered as tradition.